My 2[0] Cents
4–18–17, Lefko
Today’s Fun Fact will explore Dimes two ways. Let’s dive right in.
Frank Sinatra
Francis Wayne Sinatra, AKA Frank Jr., was born to Frank and Nancy Sinatra, in Jersey City, New Jersey (@@@Necklace) in 1944. Frank lived fairly posh life — he was the son of one of the most famous performers of all time, after all — and began performing as a musician and practicing his songwriting from an early age. Things were just starting to look up for Frank Jr.: at the young age of 19 he became the lead vocalist in Sam Donahue’s band and he was performing around the country.
It was late in December of 1963 and Sinatra was on a trip to Lake Tahoe with some friends. He was staying in room 417 of Harrah’s Lake Tahoe when Barry Keenan and fellow conspirators barged into the room and kidnapped him at gunpoint. The kidnappers took Sinatra to a Canoga Park in California’s San Fernando Valley before contacting the elder Sinatra. Here’s where things get pretty weird, as some people use this as evidence that Keenan was schizophrenic and was therefore committing the crime out of insanity (u wot): During the brief phone call, Sinatra Sr. offered one million dollars in ransom, but Keenan demanded $240,000. When asked about this later on Keenan said that he “was bringing the Sinatra family closer together and assisting the Sinatras in other intangible ways.” (suuuuuuuuure). Anywho, Sinatra paid the ransom and Frankie V2 was returned.
Within three days, Keenan and co-kidnappers Johnny Irwin (not to be confused with Steve, RIP), and Joe Amsler were captured, prosecuted, and convicted. All three men were sentenced to long prison terms but only served small portions. Keenan, for example, only served four and a half years before he was released, as it was determined that he was legally insane at the time of the crime. Evidently, Keenan had a change of heart after his release. He went into real estate and has since been writing a book about the affair whose proceeds will go to charity. Interesting move, Keenan.
This story still gets a bit weirder — the defense’s entire argument was that Frank Sr. made this entire story up to gain publicity for his son’s singing career. Obviously this was ridiculous and the jury immediately saw through it, especially since there was evidence in the phone booths that the kidnappers used to communicate with Sinatra. The shitty part is that Sinatra Sr. was definitely not in an emotional state to be dealing with this BS (I mean, no one really is, but he was particularly bad): he was in the middle of filming a “Robin and the 7 Hoods” with the Rat Pack and his good friend, JFK, had been assassinated just weeks earlier. Needless to say, he was pretty stressed.
If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with dimes. Well, the kidnappers insisted on communicating solely through payphones, which concerned Frank Sr. that he would not have enough change when the kidnappers randomly called. This created enough anxiety that he carried 10 dimes with him at all times for the rest of his life…he was even buried with 10 dimes in his pocket.
What else was he buried with? A bottle of whiskey, a pack of cigarettes, and a lighter. Baller.
FDR
Also a baller. Let’s start with the feel good story:
At this point, a well-known fact about FDR is that he himself suffered from polio, and that he went to great lengths as president to not be seen as disabled by the disease.
Having been personally affected, Roosevelt began a charity — National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis — in 1938 under the belief that if everyone gave a dime, they would be able to eradicate polio (he was right, btw, we are damn near close right now. If you are an anti-vaxxer, stop reading right now and go learn how and why you should vaccinated, here’s a good link explaining it all).
But wait, there’s more.
The main fundraising event for the charity happened every year around the Christmas season — booths would be set up around cities for children to drop their dimes into. Even though the foundation became synonymous with dime donations, the nickname “March of Dimes” didn’t come about until 1938 when stage, screen, and radio star Eddie Cantor prompted a surge in a national fundraising campaign the week before President Roosevelt’s birthday (January 30). Cantor came up with the nickname as a play on the newsreel series The March of Time. Somehow the entire country came together for a week to fundraise:
lapel pins were sold for 10 cents each, special features were produced by the motion picture studios and radio industry; and nightclubs and cabarets held dances and contributed a portion of the proceeds. Thousands of people mailed cards and letters, each containing a dime, to the White House. “Many citizens desire to personally show the President they are behind his plan to unify the fight against this disease,” said Keith Morgan, chairman of the Committee for the Celebration of the President’s Birthday. Cantor’s appeal collected more than $85,000 in what the press called “a silver tide which actually swamped the White House.”
On a birthday celebration radio broadcast, Roosevelt declared:
During the past few days bags of mail have been coming, literally by the truck load, to the White House…Yesterday between forty and fifty thousand letters came to the mail room of the White House. Today an even greater number — how many I cannot tell you — for we can only estimate the actual count by counting the mail bags. In all the envelopes are dimes and quarters and even dollar bills — gifts from grown-ups and children — mostly from children who want to help other children get well. … It is glorious to have one’s birthday associated with a work like this.
Since then, the March of Dimes has been wildly successful, functionally eradicating polio and moving onto other initiatives to decrease infant mortality and birth defects (it’s a great organization, if you’re looking for one to donate to: http://www.marchofdimes.org/)
Because of the March of Dimes’ success, FDR was honored on the face of the dime in 1946, on what would have been the president’s 64th birthday (he was already dead at this point).
Other side notes: In 1976 it became known as the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation and it wasn’t until 2007 that the name officially became the March of Dimes Foundation.
Bonus FF (that’s also a bit depressing):
Part of the reason that it’s difficult for the government to implement international vaccination campaigns is because there is some general mistrust of international health aid, and apparently for good reason.
After 9/11 there was a myth in Pakistan that the U.S. was using immunization campaigns to sterilize the local population. This was obviously untrue, but there was some reason to the myth. Turns out, the CIA had actually been conducting a fake Hepatitis B immunization campaign in Osama Bin Laden’s residence in Bilal Town at Abbottabad with the help of Dr. Shakil Afridi. The campaign was actually collecting DNA samples from children that were suspected to be his in order to confirm his location in the town. Partially as a result of this, Pakistan reported the highest number of polio cases in the world in 2011 (haven’t checked other years). This is undeniably a shitty thing to do. In the CIA’s kind-of defense, they were administering the first immunization, but you need a regimen of three shots for immunity. Bright side: it was used to confirm his presence in the area.
TL;DR: Dimes.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Sinatra_Jr.#Kidnapping
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis_eradication#Opposition_and_aid_worker_killings
